Greg Rutherford says funding is a ‘major issue’ as scrutiny of Team GB’s dearth of Winter Olympics medals ramps up
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Updated 16/02/2022 at 11:55 GMT
On day 12 of the Winter Olympics, Team GB are yet to get on the medal table in Beijing after Alpine skiing hope Dave Ryding finished 13th in the slalom. London 2012 long jump champion Greg Rutherford, who attempted to go to the Games in bobsleigh, says Britain cannot expect to be a superpower at the Winter Olympics if funding stays the way it is.
‘Fundamentally, it is money!’ – Rutherford on GB’s Olympic underperformance
London 2012 long jump champion Greg Rutherford believes Team GB have the potential to be a successful nation at the Winter Olympics, but not if the level of funding stays the same.
Great Britain are yet to get on the medal table at Beijing 2022, after several chances came and went. There were hopes in the mixed doubles curling, with world champion Charlotte Bankes in the snowboard slopestyle, in skeleton and the 2-man bobsleigh, but all have come up short - while Alpine skiing hope Dave Ryding finished 13th in the slalom this morning.
There are still contenders in bobsleigh, freestyle skiing and curling but scrutiny is beginning to increase on why Britain are not performing as well as they did at the last two Games, when the team returned home with five medals, including one gold at each. In China, a medal range of five to seven had been set, but that now looks unlikely.
Rutherford, who attempted to qualify for the Olympics in bobsleigh, says he has seen for himself the financial struggles British athletes contend with by competing in winter sports and he says unless more money is forthcoming, expectations need to change.
“The funding issue is a major issue. We are at a huge disadvantage,” said the Eurosport expert.
“We don’t have much ice, we don’t have much snow and we certainly don’t have many mountains around, so facilities are something we lack.
“What we have to do is invest in the athletes to have that opportunity to help them thrive. That often doesn’t take place. I look at a winter sport that I’ve now been involved with, with bobsleigh – there is next to no backing whatsoever from the national governing body. The skeleton programme is relatively heavily funded, the British Bobsleigh programme, not at all.
“The other issue is the talent pool. When you’re at school, the opportunities of going and giving skiing a go, bobsled a go, skeleton a go is very, very rare and relatively niche.
“If there was a system in place where we could take these great young sportsmen and women that are in the UK – and we have phenomenal talents – if we could find a way of bringing them through, I think genuinely we could be far more successful in both winter and summer sports, as long as we can keep bringing these athletes through.”
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Many athletes have had to fund their journey to the Winter Olympics through entrepreneurship, private sponsors or having a second job. Funding from UK Sport is relatively low across most winter sports, although there have been exceptions in the likes of skeleton, which received £6.4m for this cycle on the back of winning a medal at every Games since 2002.
Ski and snowboard shared £9.5m for a range of disciplines, while curling had £5.2m as regular challengers on the world circuit.
But other sports have not been so fortunate. Bobsleigh received just £120,000, meaning for each athlete that qualified for the Games in that sport, including alternates, that equates to £15,000 to be spread over four years and does not count the others - like Rutherford - who did not make it.
Despite skeleton, ski, snowboard and curling receiving significant injections, they do not match anywhere near some of the summer Olympic sports. Rowing, athletics and swimming are behemoths which were given £24.6m, £23m, and £18.7m respectively in the lead up to Tokyo 2020.
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Whether the right areas are being prioritised will always encourage debate. Funding does not always lead to success and there are still questions to be asked about the rowing performance in Japan (2 medals, no gold - that funding has been reduced slightly for Paris 2024). GB returned from Tokyo with 65 medals in total, though, and so there is a natural public expectation there would be relative, yet smaller success in Beijing.
Rutherford says there is huge potential to increase participation and elite level performance, but knows there is not an endless pot of finance from the government and the National Lottery.
“The problem is fundamentally, money,” he told The Cube.
Of course, there are bigger and harder things going on in the world at the moment than just worrying about professional sport.
“We always have to be very careful in saying we have to throw more money into sport – because we’re coming out the back end of a pandemic, there are a lot of issues in the world. I think it’s more important that we’re feeding children than worrying too much about sport.
“But equally when it’s there, we have to do it right and we have to make sure the structures are in place for it.”
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